I was 13 years old. My family had moved to Southern California from North Florida a year before. I hit adolescence with a vengeance. I was angry and rebellious, with little regard for anything my parents had to say, particularly if it had to do with me. Like so many teenagers, I struggled to escape from anything that didn't agree with my picture of the world. A "brilliant without need of guidance" kid, I rejected any overt offering of love. In fact, I got angry at the mention of the word love.
One night, after a particularly difficult day, I _____________, shut the door and got into bed. As I lay down in the privacy of my bed, my hands slipped under my pillow. There was an envelope. I pulled it out and on the envelope it said, "To read when you're alone."
Since I was alone, no one would know whether I read it or not, so I opened it. It said "Mike, I know life is hard right now, I know you are frustrated and I know we don't do everything right. I also know that I love you completely and nothing you do or say will ever change that. I am here for you if you ever need to talk, and if you don't, that's okay. Just know that no matter where you go or what you do in your life, I will always love you and be proud that you are my son. I'm here for you and I love you - that will never change. Love, Mom.
That was the first of several "To read when you're alone" letters. They were never mentioned until I was an adult.
Today I travel the world helping people. I was in Sarasota, Florida, teaching a seminar when, at the end of the day, a lady came up to me and shared the difficulty she was having with her son. We walked out to the beach, and I told her of my mom's undying love and about the "To read when you're alone" letters. Several weeks later, I got a card that said she had written her first letter and left it for her son.
That night as I went to bed, I put my hands under my pillow and remembered the relief I felt every time I got a letter. In the midst of my turbulent teen years, the letters were the calm assurance that I could be loved in spite of me, not because of me. Just before I fell asleep I thanked God that my mom knew what I, an angry teenager, needed. Today when theseas of life get stormy, I know that just under my pillow there is that calm assurance that love - consistent, abiding, unconditional love - changes lives.
1.What’s the best title of the passage?
2.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
I reached out my hands for the letter under the pillow that night when I went to bed ,and I always felt relief with the letter under my pillow.
3.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
4.What do you learn after reading the passage?(within 30 words)
5.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
A mother isdevastated, crying, yelling all she can in that dark corner. There was nobody tohear her yell and not a soul to calm her, because outside her house is a long winding lonely road.The wind was at rest and the leaves didn't rustle, silence filling the air. Loneliness was alreadykilling her, but no one knows what made her cry?
Losing something you love with all your heart isn't really the pain you can ever overcome.Radha lost her baby, her only means to live. She saw her child getting killed and the accidentwas terrible. One lonely night, she was walking down the street to get a breath of fresh air withher child hugged tight in her arms.
The whole time she walked with her child in her arms, the only thing that worried her wasAryan's future. She was imagining and feeling every day of the child's growthand figuringwhat she would have in store for him. But who knows what's in store for us tomorrow, life canchange in a second.
On that deserted road, were a few streetlights barely enough? It was this one light that couldbe seen from a distance,but as it came closer it got brighter and brighter. That light changedRadha's life into darkness forever. A speeding car came down that road. The driver came with a full speed throwing beer bottles out of his half open window. He was definitely drunk,and the speed took, everything in its path. Just then, there was a loud cry, and silence set in again.
But the mother wasn't hurt. She opened her eyes, unable to focus her eyes, and didn't seeAryan. After a few minutes when her sight cleared up she looked all over in a panic for her baby,but alas! ... The child hadn't even seen life.
Simple, don't drink and drive.You could take a life, but kill a number of people.The word "devastated" in Paragraph 1 would probably mean.
| A．worried | B．scared | C．heart-broken | D．weather-beaten |
Which of the following statements is TRUE of Radha?
| A．She had expected much of Aryan. |
| B．She got her eyes injured in the accident. |
| C．She was hit by one bottle on the arm. |
| D．She had everything ready for Aryan's future. |
The last sentence underlined implies that.
| A．drunk driving is absolutely forbidden |
| B．drunk driving is certain to kill a lot of people |
| C．the driver killed Aryan and his mother |
| D．there is more than one victim in a car accident |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．The Death of a Miserable Child |
| B．A Sad Mother on a Windy Night |
| C．The Price for Another Man's Mistake |
| D．Overspeeding from Drunk Driving |
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Kid of the Year Photo Competition
Enter your kid’s photo today and win! We’re giving away
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The Kid of the Year Photo Competition entry period begins at 12:00 a.m. January 23, 2011, and ends January 21, 2012 (“Entry Period”). Entries must arrive by 9:00 p.m. on January 21, 2012 (“Entry Deadline”). Entries will not be acknowledged or returned.
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Then complete the registration form and follow the instructions to upload one album of up to six photos of your child aged three months to eight years. You may provide one description and one album title that will be applied to all photos. Photos, without any brand names or trademarks, must be taken by participants, non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos must be .jpeg or .bmp image formats (格式) and cannot be over 3 MB
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LIMIT: One entry per family, per child, per week. One weekly prize per child. For entries of more than one child in a family, the entry process must be completed separately for each child. No group entries.We can learn from the passage that _________.
| A．you should buy something first before you enter the contest |
| B．your entry will not be returned even if you don’t win the contest |
| C．you should send your entry before 9:00 p.m. on January 21, 2011 |
| D．the editors of the contest will decide who will win the 20,000 dollars in prizes |
Linda, a mother with seven-year-old twins, wants to enter the competition. She must _________.
| A．provide a description and an album title for the kid’s photos |
| B．go to Meredith Corporation to fill out the registration forms |
| C．complete the entry process separately for each of her kids |
| D．provide the information to Facebook if she chooses Facebook Entry |
To enter the competition, photos must __________.
| A．be taken by non-professional participants |
| B．have won some prize or award |
| C．contain brand names or trademarks |
| D．contain parents’ personal information |
The purpose of the passage is __________.
| A．to advertise the website Facebook. com |
| B．to attract photographers’ interest in a photo contest |
| C．to introduce two methods of entering a photo contest |
| D．to encourage parents with children to enter a photo contest |
Shoppers throughout the West, wary(警惕的) of a double-dip recession（经济衰退）, are still pinching their pennies. However, Chinese consumers are opening their wallets—big time. According to McKinsey, shop sales in China have grown by 25 percent annually from 2007 to 2009. Consumer confidence is now at its highest point since 2007 and female shoppers are leading the way.
Chinese women saved just 24percent of their income, compared with 55percent in 2006, according to a recent study in Women of China Magazine. What’s more, three quarters of Chinese women say that they’re the ones who control the family purse strings .That means the nation’s 650million women are an “emerging powerhouse within the powerhouse” of China.
In the 1950s women contributed just 20percent of household income. That rose to about 40percent in the 1990s and then reached 50percent last year.
In a recent study of Chinese consumer behavior, McKinsey found that women tend to shop more frequently than men, and spend more on personal-care products and food. Men, by contrast, tend to spend more of their income on gadgets(小玩意) , drinks and alcohol, dining out, and socializing. They also tend to save for the bigger-ticket items, like cars and houses.
Chinese women make up an ever-growing small part of the market—up from 20percent a decade ago to 50percent last year. It’s estimated that in the next five years women will account for 55percent of the $9 billion market. “The future is female,” concludes a January HSBC(汇丰银行) report on luxury goods(奢侈品) in China.
The Chinese Market Research Group recently found that women younger than 35 are the most optimistic segment(群体) in China. A very large 80percent of the 3,500 women surveyed saying they’ll spend more in the second half of 2010 than they did in the first half. With trends like these, Chinese women may bring new meaning to the term “the power of the purse.”According to the passage, Chinese women _________.
| A．save more of their income than before |
| B．save less of their income than before |
| C．make as much money as men in the 1990s |
| D．spend half of their income on luxury goods |
The fourth paragraph mainly tells us that _________.
| A．women go shopping more frequently than men |
| B．women spent more on personal care products than men |
| C．men tend to save for the bigger-ticket items than women |
| D．Chinese women and men have different consuming behavior |
The underlined phrase in the first paragraph probably means_________.
| A．making more money in a careful way |
| B．wasting their money without hesitation |
| C．spending their money in a careful way |
| D．recovering the economy at a fast speed |
Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
| A．Chinese Men Go Socializing | B．Chinese Women Go shopping |
| C．The Future Is Female | D．The Purse Is Powerful |
Why would an animal kill itself? It seems a strange question, and yet it is one that has made some scientists curious for a long time. For there is a kind of animal called lemming（旅鼠）, that periodically killed themselves together, and no one knows just why!
The small creatures which live in the Scandinavian mountains, feed on a diet of roots and special insects and live in nests they dig underground. When their food supply is large, the lemmings live a normal and undisturbed life.
However, when the lemmings’ food supply becomes too low to support the population, a singular migration（迁徙）begins. The lemmings leave their nests in groups. Great numbers of them begin to travel across the Scandinavian plains, a journey that may last weeks. The lemmings eat everything in their path, continuing their long march until they reach the sea.
The reason for what follows remains unbelievable to naturalists. Upon reaching the coast, the lemmings do not stop but swim by the thousands into the sea. Most stay afloat only a short time before they tire, sink and drown.
A common theory for this mass self-killing is that the lemmings do not realize that the ocean is such a huge body of water in their cross-country journey, the animals must cross many smaller bodies of water, such as rivers and small lakes. They may think that the sea is just another such swimmable path to go through. But no final answer has been found to the strange happening.The passage is mainly about______.
| A．how lemmings find food |
| B．why animals kill themselves |
| C．the lemmings’ self-killing |
| D．the food supply in the Scandinavian mountains |
A reason for the lemmings’ self-killing might be that they______.
| A．go mad from a lack of food |
| B．hope to find fish for food |
| C．decide to reduce the population |
| D．think they can cross the sea |
Why are scientists curious about the lemmings’ behavior?
| A．Because they are the only animals that live in Scandinavia. |
| B．Because it is very unusual for animals to kill themselves. |
| C．Because of the amount of food they can eat on their march to the sea. |
| D．Because they can gather together in such huge numbers. |
The underlined word “singular” means______.
| A．unusual | B．single | C．wonderful | D．common |
Cheating is nothing new. But today, education and administrations are finding that examples of academic dishonesty on the part of students have become more frequent--- and are less likely to be punished---than in the
past. Cheating appears to have gained acceptance among good and poor students alike.
Why is student cheating on the rise? No one really knows. Some blame the trend on a general loosening of moral values among today’s youth. Others have attributed(归因于) increased cheating to the fact that today’s youth are far more practical than their idealistic ancestors. Whereas in the late sixties and early seventies, students were filled with visions about changing the word, today’s students feel great pressure to survive and succeed. In interviews with students at high schools and colleges around the country, both young men and women said that cheating had become easy. Some suggested they did it out of hate for teachers they didn’t respect. Others looked at it as a game. Only if they were caught, some said, would they feel guilty. “People are competitive,” said a second-year college student named Anna, from Chicago. “There is an potential fear. If you don’t do well, your life is going to be ruined. The pressure is not only from parents and friends but from yourself. To achieve. To succeed. It’s almost as though we have to surpass people to achieve our own goals.
Edward Wynne, editor of a magazine blames the rise in academic dishonesty in the schools. He claims that administrators and teachers have been too hesitant to take action. Dwight Huber, chairman of the English Department at Amarillo sees the matter differently, blaming the rise in cheating on the way students evaluated. “I would cheat if I felt I was being cheated,” Mr. Huber said. He feels that as long as teachers give short-answer tests rather than essay questions and rate students by the number of facts they can memorize rather than by how well they can combine and process information, students will try to beat the system. “ The concept of cheating is based on the false belief that the system is legal and there is something wrong with the individual who’re doing it,” he said, “That’s too easy an answer. We’ve got to start looking at the system.” Educators are finding that students who cheat________.
| A．have poor academic records |
| B．use the information in late years |
| C．can be academically weak or strong |
| D．are more likely to be punished than before |
Which of the following statements reflects the information in the passage?
| A．The pressure students faced with is partly the reason causing the student cheating. |
| B．Only the educational system and administrators are to blame for the rise in the cheating. |
| C．The 1960s vision of changing the world helped students never make mistakes. |
| D．Punishment for cheaters has always been severe in this country. |
The phrase “the individuals” in Line 8, Para 3 refers to _________.
| A．students who practice cheating |
| B．parents who put pressure on their children. |
| C．school administrators who approve of short-answer tests. |
| D．teachers who are too hesitant to take actions against cheating. |
The author probably would agree with the point of view that _________.
| A．students who cheat should be driven out of school |
| B．parents alone must take responsibility for the rise in student cheating |
| C．the educational system is sound, and students must follow every rule |
| D．the educational system in this country would benefit from a thorough evaluation |